Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Pakistan PM says trail cold in bin Laden hunt

GENEVA, July 5 (Reuters) - Reports that Osama bin Laden is hiding along the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border are purely speculative and nobody hunting the al Qaeda chief knows where he is, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Wednesday."Nobody has any idea where this gentleman is, because if they did, they would use all their resources to go after the individual and try to capture him," Aziz told journalists.

A U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday that the CIA has disbanded a unit overseeing its hunt for bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network hijacked planes to attack U.S. targets on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Despite a $25 million bounty for his capture, and a history of ill health, bin Laden has successfully eluded efforts to find him. Aziz said it was wrong to assume he was in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as is commonly stated.

"There is speculation as to where he is, but certainly nobody has a clue," he said at a press briefing in Geneva, where he had been attending United Nations' meetings.